Extreme Nonlinear Dynamics in Vacuum Laser Acceleration with a Crossed Beam Configuration

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex, potentially chaotic dynamics of a single electron in a vacuum laser acceleration setup with crossed laser beams, revealing extreme nonlinearity and sensitivity to initial conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a model of electron motion in intersecting relativistic laser fields and demonstrates the system's high sensitivity and possible chaos using various numerical solvers.

Findings

Advanced solvers struggle to produce converged solutions beyond 100 fs.

Electron orbit metrics show high sensitivity to initial conditions.

The system exhibits signs of extreme non-linearity and potential chaos.

Abstract

A relatively simple model problem where a single electron moves in two relativistically-strong obliquely intersecting plane wave-packets is studied using a number of different numerical solvers. It is shown that, in general, even the most advanced solvers are unable to obtain converged solutions for more than about 100 fs in contrast to the single plane-wave problem, and that some basic metrics of the orbit show enormous sensitivity to the initial conditions. At a bare minimum this indicates an unusual degree of non-linearity, and may well indicate that the dynamics of this system are chaotic.